LONAR LAKE

June 14, 2020

The 56,000-year-old Lonar crater sanctuary lake in Buldhana district has turned red/pink and become a hot topic of discussion among scientists.

About:

  • Location: Lonar in Buldhana district, Maharashtra.

  • Formation: Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, was created by a meteor impact during the Pleistocene Epoch. A meteorite estimated to weigh two-million-tonnes slammed into the Earth, around 50,000 years creating a 1.83-km diameter crater where the lake formed.

  • It is the only known hyper velocity meteorite crater in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth.

  • It was notified as a National Geo-heritage Monument in 1979 by Geological Survey of India (GSI).

  • It is famous as world’s largest basaltic impact crater. Two other similar ones are in Dhala and Ramgarh in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively but both are relatively unknown. 

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